Controlling immigration is no longer in our power

Christopher Booker's Notebook
By Christopher Booker
4/11/2007
Controlling immigration is no longer in our power

It may have seemed an easy target when David Cameron last week took Gordon Brown to task over immigration and accused him of "taking the British people for fools". Not only was the Government caught out relying on figures four years out of date in estimating the number of foreign workers at 800,000 rather than 1.6 million, but its own Office of National Statistics then weighed in by predicting that within 10 years the population of the UK will have risen by a further 5 million to 65 million.

Mr Cameron was rightly cautious in saying that the first step towards controlling immigration was to be "clear about what we can directly control". Under EU law, we can do little to restrict the right of residence of anyone from the other 26 member states. We also have no power to restrict the entry of asylum seekers, since this too is an EU competence.

In short, we no longer have any control over easily the greatest number of would-be immigrants. But, Mr Cameron claimed, at least a Conservative government would insist that spouses of British residents coming from non-EU countries would have to be 21 and able to speak basic English. Even this, however - as he would realise if he studied EU directive 2004/38 – would be illegal discrimination.

So there is really very little Mr Cameron can honestly promise in the way of controlling immigration. He might also bear in mind Article 62 of the new EU treaty. This proposes to abolish any remaining controls "on persons, whatever their nationality, when crossing internal borders". In other words, once someone had got into any part of the EU, from Africa, Asia or anywhere else, we would have no way to stop them coming to Britain. When it comes to immigration control, I am afraid Mr Cameron will have to accept that it is game, set and match to our real government – the one which now rules us from Brussels.

What was it Edward Heath told us back in 1973? "There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified."

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